


they move on tracks of neverending light

by Beabaseball (beabaseball)



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe, Darkest Timeline, Gen, Grimdark, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-02 09:33:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17261819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beabaseball/pseuds/Beabaseball
Summary: This world... has always been connected.One destiny. One sky.A dark-take au on KH while we wait for KH3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i have this in my docs as 'grimdark kh.'  
> I plan at the time to only definitely get up to Olympus Colloseum, because that's all I can guarantee.... but I've had enough dreams to flesh out this world way too much. 
> 
> Could be considered the 'good side' to  A Sky Full Of Stars

This is what Sora remembers:

The beach Kairi runs across is long and bright. The sun is going down, and its colors shine off the wet sand, turning everything orange and brown as night draws nearer. 

Then, he realizes the beach they run on faces East.

The sun comes down. 

This is the dream that Sora has had ever since he was little. It’s the oldest dream he has. 

He knew that he and Kairi were destined to be best friends the first time they had a sleepover, because she had the same dream, too. 

“I saw a boy standing on a pier,” she said, wiggling in her sleeping bag, eyes wide and shining on the floor of Sora’s livingroom, lit by the one lamp on the floor beside them and their shared bright personalities. “And he had brown hair, and it was really exciting coming here, because it looked a lot like here from my dream!” 

Kairi had washed ashore three months ago. 

“You remember the dream from before?” Sora asked, gasping in all the shock and awe an eight year old in his first big mystery could muster.

“Yeah,” Kairi said. “I remember that, and the library, and….” (she paused to think and wrinkled her nose.) “...my grandma?” 

…

“Do you think she’s looking for you?” Sora whispered. He didn’t want Kairi to go home to her old family, even though that’s what a good ending in a movie told him would have to happen eventually.

But Kairi shook her head, and somehow that wasn’t as exciting as it should’ve been, to know that Kairi wasn’t worried about it at all--

“She’s dead,” Kairi said. 

“Oh,” Sora said, and shuffled a little deeper down into his own sleeping bag. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Kairi said, her voice gone quiet. “I can’t remember stuff, anyway.” 

There was some quiet. Some nodding. Sora’s dad was dead, too, but he didn’t want to talk about it. He wasn’t like Kairi. He could still remember a little, even if most of his memory was that he shouldn’t talk about dad in front of Mom, because she got upset.

“Hey, Sora?” Kairi said.

“Yeah?” said Sora.

“I’m not gonna forget about you, too, am I?”

\--

( _ If you ever forgot about me, I wouldn’t stop til I reminded you! So you don’t have to worry.) _

_ (Let’s write it down so if you did forget, you can remind yourself.) _

_ >> _ **_(As if you could ever forget me, Kairi.)_ **

\--

It’s not as if it’s something they came up with over a weekend. They’ve had some dumb plans made up on the spot, but this--

This, their raft? That requires more planning than a stupid on-the-spot idea ever needed. On-the-spot plans are races that see who can swim the farthest, who can beat the other to the far side of the island and back, who can find the biggest shell on the beach. A raft requires they find wood, and rope, and make sure they can all fit together on the raft. It means figuring out when to set off. What direction to go. Thinking about if their families will be mad.

They shouldn’t be mad, because it’s not like they’ve kept it a secret, what they’re doing. Riku’s been telling people he was going to go off and be an explorer since he was twelve. That doesn’t mean people  _ believed _ him, but that’s not his fault. There’s not much left to explore nowadays. Their islands are small. The houses are white and have patios of flowers, and one neighbor’s house is much like the other’s. The play island has working electricity and plumbing. Once a month the mainland sends a ship to haul off the waste so the local reef doesn’t get polluted, though where that waste goes on the mainland, Sora’s never asked.

They know everyone on the island, really. They have soccer tournaments with the other big islands on the archipelago, and they all plan school events so that there’s not really any clashing. So that kids could go visit their friends on other islands without missing something. 

They all wore white for their middle school graduations. White suits for boys and white dresses for girls, and each year before the graduates stood up, they gave out awards. Sora and Riku never really got anything, or expected to. 

Kairi did, but she wasn’t really excited about it. She had to do well as the mayor’s daughter. That’s why on days that started with ‘T’, she couldn’t come to the play island. She was stuck in the house with her tutor, scheduling around school events or not.

She had to do well, so summer, when she had a little more time between studying, was precious, and they’d used it as well as they could, gathering things up and building their raft, because….

Because Riku and Sora could probably get away with dropping out after they graduated at the end of the upcoming school year, but Kairi was expected to continue on to highschool, and…

And that’s why this wasn’t a split-second decision, or something dumb that Riku had given up on when he was twelve, or something that they just made jokes about but never did. 

…

_ (We can't be together forever... so we'd better make the time we do have something to remember.) _

_ (We might not see each other again... but that's just part of growing up. It's not how much you see each other, it's how much you think about each other... right?) _

_ >> _ **_(Let’s run away together. Just you and me!)_ **

They could always come back and become adults and have their adult lives later, but… right now, their time together was running out. 

So when Riku challenged him to their next race, it was who could gather all the materials fast enough while Kairi kept her list: two more logs. Another sheet of canvas. More rope. 

And as the idea grew more real and the days began to shorten, their time began to shorten… seagull eggs. Fresh water. Mushrooms, sliced up and laid out to dry on Kairi’s desk, where the birds couldn’t steal them away. 

They didn’t have a date in mind, but that hardly mattered when somehow, they all knew it would be in a panic they’d leave. 

He and Kairi knew, at least. They knew that it was just going to happen one day, when Riku’s nerves gave out and he showed up and asked them to get on the raft, and shoved them off from shore. They just had to wait for that day, and in the meantime, they’d gather candy bars and salvage treats from the pantry and stow them on the play island, practice cracking open coconuts and how they’d fight off pirates with their wooden swords, and watch the sunset from their favorite palm tree.

The day Kairi handed them two thelassia charms, Sora got a lump in his throat holding onto it, looking at the cute smile Kairi’d drawn on its face. A knot of something like anticipation curled in his stomach, just as much as fear tensed in his arms. 

She must have felt it too--the mounting tension as summer grew to a close. Riku had to make the call soon, or never. They were just waiting for the older teen to give them the sign it was time to go--

\--

Sora’s home ate late at night, once his mom was back from work and Sora came home from the play island or school. It was already dark early from the storm rolling in over the sea, and Sora had fallen into a nap just as he got out of the shower after returning from the island. He’d tugged on his PJ onesie and curled up in bed, snoring in minutes, and--

And woke up to the sound of thunder like breaking waves and wind strong enough the roof rattled and shook above his head. 

He woke up like the weather: sharp and anxious as a pin knife, heart pounding, but unable to remember the dream he’d just had. Only that with the next flash of lighting, even that panic was wiped away. The precious things that were sitting out in the cove of the play-island, ready for the sea, but not secured down for a storm. 

“The raft!” 

He threw his light blankets off and tugged on his shoes in under thirty seconds, snatching a blue coat off his desk chair and clattering down the stairs and out the door. 

( >> **_“Sora, it’s time for dinner! ...Sora?”_ ** )

And, well. 

He never came back. 


	2. traverse town

Sora had spent about five minutes conscious, probably--because he wasn’t entirely convinced he was actually awake at all. 

The buildings around him were unlike any he’d ever seen before. Gone were the beiges and pastels of his little island-- these were dark and painted in browns and greens and reds. Their roofs were much more sharply slanted where they were slanted at all, and not just ugly little rectangles. Their windows were crooked and some were barred up.

The air smelled different.

Wrong. 

_ Bland  _ somehow. 

Or maybe that was the wrong way to put it, because the place still  _ reeked _ . 

It reeked like the dumpster outside a seafood restaurant. It reeked like the bowl of soup you forgot in your room and had covered up with a paper plate for a while but now you had to sneak it downstairs in the dead of night and wash the things growing in it out. It reeked like a cat found a place a dog had pooped and decided the solution was to spray on it. 

Speaking of dogs, they were, without a doubt, the best thing in this weird town, where the streets were entirely stone without a hint of plants or sunlight to be seen, the streetlamps were black and crooked and old looking, and when he peeked around a corner he saw a  _ duck  _ wearing a baseball hat and goggles coming out of a store.

At least the dog who’d woken him up by licking the dirt off his face looked refreshingly normal. It was yellow with a thin coat, and its tail wagged so hard when Sora gave him a tired scratch on the head that his whole body wagged with it.

And, thankfully, the dog hadn’t left him alone after getting his scratchies, but trotted right beside him as Sora grunted, standing himself up and started to creep out of the alley he’d woken up in. 

He didn’t know how he’d  _ gotten  _ to the alley, but he was still wet, dripping with ocean water and aching all over as the dog nuzzled him. 

(He didn’t know dreams could make him ache like this, haha.) 

“This is pretty weird,” he told the dog aloud, reaching his hand down to give another scratch and receiving a lick in return. He crept around the first corner, looking to where he’d seen the duck before, but there wasn’t anything like weird toddler-sized ducks in sight this time. 

...he took a few more cautious steps to the end of the building, to look down on what looked like a little… empty square in the middle of town. 

Not  _ empty.  _ Maybe not empty. There were a few people wandering around. A few. It looked like they were shopping. Wandering from store to store. Not… not really looking up, he guessed, which was weird, but… but he glanced up, and… it was a pretty dark sky, despite all the street lamps and neon lights. But far less lights than he was used to back home. 

...it wasn’t much to look up at, this sky. 

Maybe that’s why no one bothered. 

...one mystery solved, Sora shuffled out a little further, wandering down the steps (more like  _ inching _ . But he was definitely not scared. Dreams couldn’t hurt you. They could just make you  _ think  _ you were hurt. Which this one already had succeeded at, because his hip and ribs felt like Riku’d slammed his sword  _ right  _ into it, geez) and into the town square to look around more. 

...he got a weird, acidic feeling in his throat, looking around at all the things that felt familiar to him in these weird buildings. In this weird place. There was an accessory shop up on the hill. He’d just walked out of an alley behind an items shop, he could see now, looking at the sign from the front--there was a little crown on top of the sign, glowing bright yellow. 

He turned in a circle and almost stumbled backwards, trying to crane his neck to take everything in. 

“What happened…?” he asked the dog without looking at him. “What happened to my home? My island? What…” 

His eyes landed on someone who wasn’t moving. 

A woman in a short, red dress, standing under a streetlamp by a café on the corner. 

She was watching him. Somehow, that made it easier. 

He turned, tripping over his own feet, to jog towards her, the dog trotting at his heels. 

“Hey!” he said, ignoring how startled she looked that he’d come right up to her so quickly. She had a lot of makeup on. Maybe that was something people did here, too. 

(But he’d run too fast, and everything still hurt, and by the time he reached her, he had to stop and put his hands on his knees and take deep breaths to keep himself upright.)

“Hey,” he said again, softer, blinking up at the woman once he caught his breath. “Can--can you tell me where I am?” 

She parted her lips for a moment (they were really red, too) as if to explain, and then frowned instead, lowering her hands at her side. He didn’t know what that meant. 

“You’re new here?” she asked, which wasn’t really the kind of response that Sora was expecting. 

“Where’s ‘here’?” he asked again, hoping that was answer enough. 

And then she sighed out loud, this time, blinking down at him slowly with really heavily shadowed eyes. 

“You’re in Traverse Town,” she said. “This is where lost things go." 

“Uh…?” Sora said, finding himself shrinking down again. “Sorry? I’ve never heard of it.” 

The woman put her hand on her hip, which made him wonder if maybe she was one of his teachers dressed in disguise about to scold him for not paying attention in Geography, but when she spoke, her voice was softer than before somehow. Lower. 

“How old are you, kiddo? Got a name?” 

“Sora,” he said, and didn’t say it was rude to ask a name before introducing yourself. “I’m fourteen.”

“Sora,” she said, giving him a slow nod. “...you look like you’ve been through a hurricane. Wanna grab a seat and get something to eat?” 

“Oh, uh--” Ignoring his aching hip, Sora crammed his hands in his pockets, as if he had allowance he’d shoved in his pockets before going out to the boats to investiga--

“Grab a seat,” she said again, and this time gave him a little shove on the shoulder to get him moving. 

And he stumbled a little with the shove, but he went, shuffling with his new dog friend to one of the nearby outdoor café tables. The lady followed him, sitting across from him with another big sigh. 

“...do you, uh, work here?” he asked, not really sure.

“Nah,” she said, but slid the menu across to him anyway. “Ern just rents me the upstairs apartment. See anything you like?”

“Oh,” he said, and quickly looked down to squint at the menu when she prompted him to again. He saw a lot he didn’t know about on it, actually. Hot dogs? --he glanced down at the dog by the foot of the table, who started waggling all over again just from being looked at. 

Sora decided he should definitely not try and learn what a hot dog was, just in case. 

...his unsureness must’ve shown on his face, because when he glanced up again, the lady was smiling at him, even if her eyes seemed sad. 

“What’d you eat back home?” she asked. “You have soda there?” 

“Yeah,” he said, because who didn’t have soda? “Uh.. fish, and like. Rice? Fruit and stuff?”

Just... regular food. 

“Hmm,” she said, tapping the side of her face. And then she got up from her chair and leaned across the table, and looked down at his menu from above it. With a big blue fingernail, she pointed. 

“Try the tuna melt and some Pap, okay? You like pineapples?”

...he nodded. 

He liked pineapples. 

“Pap’s like pineapple soda.”

Oh! 

“Okay. Thanks! Uh, do I wait for a waiter, or--?”

He gestured vaguely around his head, and in no way indicatively of knowing what he wanted to say. But it did seem to get across that he had no idea what to do. 

She nodded again and sat down once more, turning behind her. “See that little window over there? Go up to there and tell them what you want. I’ll pay when you’re done, okay?”

He nodded, standing from his seat still clutching the menu with both hands and bowing. “Thank you very much!” 

She laughed. Covered her mouth, smiling. 

Sora hurried to the window to place his order.

…

A tuna melt was pretty good, he learned. Tuna and cheese. Tuna tasted a little more like bird than fish, but bird was good, too. And, honestly, even if it wasn’t very familiar, he felt a lot better just getting something in his stomach. 

He picked some of the crust off and held it down to the dog lying on the cobblestone beside him. He heard the lady mumble, “you’re going to spoil him,” but it sounded like she thought it was okay somehow, too. She was smiling again when he glanced up to check. 

“Traverse Town is where lost things go,” she said again when the topic was back, hand on her cheek and leaning with her elbow on the table. “...do you know about the heartless?” 

He shook his head around the straw of the Pom, and she pursed her red lips some, and pulled out a pen from somewhere and scrawled a little drawing on one of the napkins on the middle of the table. 

When she slid it over it had a couple places where the pen had ripped it up, but Sora still glanced over the little thing she’d drawn. At first, he thought it looked kinda like the textbook’s blown-up picture of an ant--

“Ah!” 

Sora stood up from his chair, knocking the table and startling the dog into sitting up, ears perked. 

“Those things! They were on my island!” 

(She didn’t look very surprised. She just looked upset. Why was she upset but not surprised?)

She nodded again, sighing again, and took the gold drink she’d ordered herself and drank a little more. Tucked her long hair behind her ear. “Yeah. People show up here after those things show up on their home worlds. Traverse Town has them too, but the First District, where we are right now, is about as safe as it gets…”

“Home worlds--?” Sora asked, not sitting down again yet. His jaw felt tight and his head was swimming off without him. ( _ He was in another world? _ )

But she wasn’t surprised at that question, either. “Yeah. We’re all from somewhere else. Most gossip says different worlds.” 

She gestured outside the café’s balcony, out up at the stars? Or-- or at the item’s shop across the street, with its brown and dark boards criss-crossing its walls, and… and up tall, behind it, somewhere beyond the confines of the little square he’d seen so far, was a building he hadn’t spotted before. It was tall and made of bricks, and… purple. Purple and sharp at the edges in a way that the buildings around him weren’t. 

And he started to see other things, too. The glowing signs looked so out of place on these buildings, covered in dust and brown. The building above that one was gray, but its brick work looked weird. The one behind  _ that  _ he--he couldn’t even tell what it was made out of. 

None of these buildings looked like they’d been built beside each other. None of them looked like they fit. 

Sora felt his heart move up into his neck, and it pulsed with nausea. 

(Where was the ocean that was meant to bring him here?

_ That was the smell that was missing _ , he realized, because there was a weak little thing of white sitting on the table.  _ Salt _ .)

...when he looked back at the lady, she was still looking at him with that vaguely-upset, understanding-type expression. Like she  _ knew  _ what was going to happen. 

“...I can probably put you up for the night in a spare room if you give me a second to talk to Ern,” she said, her voice soft and low once more. “But you should start looking for places to take you in. You’re young enough, I’m sure an orphanage or somewhere would-- Sora!”

Maybe she knew what was going to happen, but Sora didn’t, and Sora didn’t want to know. He took off from the café at a sprint, not sure where he was running to and not bothering to think too much about it. He could hear the dog running behind him and in a few moments he could feel it panting on his legs, but he didn’t stop, and the dog didn’t either. 

He passed they alley he’d woken up in, and kept running. Diagonally up some stairs, and passed more shops--brightly colored lights, dull brown wood, brown stone, crooked lights and crooked posts-- 

He ran until he slammed face-first into a large arch doorway in the street, shoved it open, and collapsed, curing up against the wall on the other side. 

_ Lost _ .

What had happened to his home? His island?

He tried to not think about why she said to go to an orphanage. Why she didn’t even mention trying to get back. As if he popped up here and it was a one-way trip only. As if you couldn’t sail back once you’d landed here, like a strong current dragging you to shore, too strong to fight again. Like a reef too big to boat--

( _ “I know I can always come back here,” Kairi said on their sitting tree _ )

...the dog licked his face again, and lay its whining head down on Sora’s hip. Sora swallowed down the lump in his throat and tried to remember how breathing worked. He had to wipe snot off his nose.

“Hey,” Sora croaked. 

The dog’s ears perked up, and its body nuzzled closer with a  _ whump _ as it shoved even further into Sora’s lap. 

“...Haha. Thanks.” 

He gave the dog a scratch on the head, and tried to breathe the saltless air again.

“...I was supposed to come here with people,” he mumbled, looking down at the pooch. “...do you think you can find them?” 

The dog lifted its head again. 

Sora’s heart lifted. 

“I’m looking for--” Riku was gonna be safe on his own, but, “--a girl. Uh, she’s a little taller than me, and she likes wearing dresses. She’s got blue eyes and her hair’s a lot lighter than mine, and it’s starting to get longer. Do you know her?” 

The yellow dog clambered to its feet and waited just long enough for Sora to scrambled up too before taking off down the street. 

“Ah-- wait up!”

They bolted. 

Sora hadn’t really gotten time or had the thought to look around where they were, but this place also seemed different from the square. It was brighter and a little cleaner, and the buildings looked concrete in a lot of places from the little bit he glanced as they went by. 

And there weren’t many people, either. 

He realized that a few minutes too late. 

There weren’t people, even though he thought he saw movement. 

And then he saw-- 

“HELP!” 

He saw a man, running from an ant with bright glowing eyes and little hands and feet, the size of Sora’s torso. 

The dog started howling, and leapt--

The dog bounded right over the man’s head and landed on the shadow chasing him.

The man ran to the door Sora had just been crouching behind, still screaming for help. 

Sora looked back towards the dog, and didn’t see the man again. 

The dog had the shadow in its jaws, but wasn’t biting down, and it had stopped growling or howling at all--maybe because its mouth was busy trying to hold the thing still. 

But its tail still wagged when Sora started to creep up closer to it. 

“It--you can touch those okay…?” Sora asked, remembering how his wooden sword had flown right through them without even seeming to leave a mark, despite all the time he’d trained, before… 

(before…) 

The dog’s tail thumped against the ground, and the little ant-shadow began to… melt. Melt right into the ground. 

“Ah!” 

The dog didn’t let go, calmly stepping into the purple puddle where the heartless was struggling. 

Sora scrambled forward and wrapped his arms around the dog’s middle, but… but if the dog wasn’t pulling back or scared, he shouldn’t try to tug him out forcefully, right? Would that make things worse?

But the dog just kept wagging its tail and seemed to glance back at Sora with calm eyes as its paws, and Sora’s ankles sank into the cold dark. 

“A-are you sure about this?” Sora asked. 

The dog gave a ‘wuff’ around the creature’s neck. 

And Sora nodded again, swallowing down the creeping fear the cold pooling around his knees brought, and held his breath, before something far beneath his feet gave way, and he tumbled into the dark.


	3. Chapter 3

Sora remembered screaming, and then he remembered hitting the ground. 

The dog yelped, because Sora had landed on top of him. And they’d both landed on top of the shadow. 

And the shadow, when Sora opened up his eyes (tearful, because  _ ouch _ , he suddenly could feel all the aches in his chest and hip again), was just a smoking whisp fading away from under his elbow. 

...he felt kinda bad about that, but not very much. He felt a lot worse for his elbow and ribs. 

“Ungh…” he pushed himself onto his knees, and the dog wiggled out from under him, hopping to its feet as if it didn’t even feel the fall, and literally shook it all off, spraying Sora with spit. Before turning around and giving him a few face licks for good measure. “Augh! Stop!” 

He was not spared. 

It distracted him from the pain in his side a little, but it wouldn’t distract him forever. 

Once he finally pushed the dog back again and wiped his face as best he could of the slobber and actually got a chance to look around, he realized… this was even worse than the place he’d been before.

“Where are we  _ now!? _ ” 

Around him, there were trees the size of houses and weird, big fruit hanging down!  There were leaves on a few ugly furns the size of Sora’s head (normal enough) with what looked like gold stitched on them ( _ weird _ ) and he was  _ pretty sure _ as soon as his head whipped around that there was something that looked like a rocking horse go zooming by his head.

“Uh… hey, Dog..? Why are we here now?” Sora asked, glancing around uncertainly, only to find that when he looked down, the dog was already starting to trot off through the tall (head height,  _ weird _ ) grass. “Hey, don’t leave me behind!” 

The dog didn’t leave him behind, but it only really paused long enough to give another happy bark once it saw Sora starting to run after him before breaking into another trot. 

There’d been a lot of running around today, and not a lot of time for catching his breath. His knees were all scraped up and stinging, and his chest was really starting to hurt. Thankfully, the dog didn’t go far this time. They ducked under a few arches and roots in a tree, and pretty soon the giant trees changed abruptly into hedges.

It was pretty comforting for about five seconds to think they’d entered someone’s garden, before Sora realized after the third turn that this wasn’t a garden. ...This was a hedge maze.

He huffed and puffed, trying to keep up with the dog, and stuck one hand out to touch the wall and make sure they didn’t get  _ too  _ lost, hopefully. He broke a few branches along the way, even though he wasn’t sure he wanted to go back to the forest at all, but it was probably Riku’s voice hiding in the back of his head somewhere, telling him he should mark a trail just in case. 

So he did, almost unthinkingly, and ran behind the dog through the maze until it finally opened up again on the other side, leading him to--

“Woah!” 

\--a platform he immediately ran face-first into. 

_ Whack _ .

“Oh my!” someone gasped.

...Sora picked himself up off the ground and groaned again. 

The tuna melt was trying really hard to come back up… he never thought he’d be so upset to taste a fish in the back of his throat, but it turned out, it’d been a much better fish going down. 

He lifted his head and tried to not throw up in the direction of the voice. 

And of all the weird stuff he’d seen today in this other world, he still wasn’t expecting what he saw, somehow.

The yellow dog sat a few feet away, tail thumping blithely on the ground. Beside the dog, there was a girl. She was blond, blue-eyed, and paler than even Kairi ever was. And she was standing in a bird cage. 

In a  _ person-sized  _ birdcage.

“I say, are you alright?” the girl asked, gripping the bars of the cage and pressing her face between them. And then she stumbled back from the cage with an ‘oh! Manners here…’ and curtsied. “My name is Alice.”

“Mmh Sora,” Sora said, his mouth sore from smacking into the wooden structure. “R’ _ you  _ alright?” 

“Yes, I’m quite alright,” she said, “Or… ohh, I suppose not really, but you’d better get away before that Queen comes back, or you’ll get a lot worse than a bloody nose I’m afraid!” 

Bloody nose?

Sora reached up to touch his face. 

He didn’t  _ think  _ he was bleeding. 

“I was just exaggerating a little!” Alice said, huffing, and Sora dropped his hand. Alice dropped her temper just as soon as it had come. “Ohh… but that’s what got me into this in the first place, isn’t it? Not being precise enough… you’d best be careful not to mumble like you’ve been doing, either. I’m sure _that_ should get you in trouble as well…” 

...Sora stood up a little and wobbled towards her, glancing around at the empty center of the maze. All around them stood wooden constructs, covered in a coat of arms. The one he’d run into was the tallest, with two seats up at the top. Some hedges were also trimmed into podiums, and a few into gates, like the one he’d left the maze from. There wasn’t anyone around. So he shuffled closer to the cage where Alice was in, and sat down in front of it when he found he was a bit too woozy from the hit to stand up to talk. 

“What’s going on?” he asked, and without prompting, Alice crouched in her little blue dress right beside where he’d sat down outside the cage. 

...she looked a little younger than he did, he realized. She was a little bit smaller than him, even though girls got the growth spurt early, and she  _ definitely  _ had the round face of a little kid still. Sora didn’t exactly consider himself  _ old _ , but she was totally at least a year or two his junior, like the kids just starting middle school. They were absolutely tiny-- if anything, she was closer to their size than his.

“I was just trying to find my way home, but I keep being interrupted or made fun of, and the Cheshire cat told me I should perhaps try to find the Queen to find my way home, since all ways are her ways here--so  _ her  _ way to my home, I suppose, but…” 

He listened, not really sure what was going on--something about everyone correcting her spoken grammar, which  _ he  _ thought was pretty freaky grammar for a twelve year old himself, honestly, but he got the idea that wasn’t… what was really important here. 

“...monstrous  _ things  _ in the forest, and…” 

Sora sat still beside the cage, quiet, as Alice started to cry. 

“...she thinks I  _ attacked  _ her!” 

...Sora tried to reach his hand in between the bird cage’s bars, and gave what he thought was a comforting pat on the shoulder, but Alice just looked startled and confused about it, bringing her hands down from her face to stare at him openly. 

...Was she critiquing his  _ comfort  _ grammar with that face?

Mean!!

But Sora still pulled his hand away, curling it into his chest instead as he leaned against the podium.

“Sorry, uh. ...I’m kinda lost, here, too.” 

...that seemed to do  _ something  _ about the weird tension around her, at least. 

“Oh?” Alice said, wiping her face once more. “You’re not…  _ from  _ here?” 

Sora shook his head. “No. I was on my island, and then, uh… I fell. Like, twice.” 

He tried to laugh a little. 

Alice sat up a little straighter. “I think I fell as well! Yes, I-- I was chasing a white rabbit! And I found myself stumbling down when I followed him into his rabbit hole! Why and then, I found myself here!” 

“Where everything’s really weird?!” 

“Yes! Precisely! There isn’t a bit of logic here at all! Ooh, I do wish I’d been a bit quicker to take my own advice and not been so eager to run off…”

Sora just nodded, his throat tight. “Do you think you know how to get back again?” 

Alice nodded, holding in a sniffle and hiding her nose once more. “Oh, yes, I’m sure if I can just find the path I took before… but knowing the Queen, even just saying I  _ took  _ the path will be a confession of highway robbery!”

“That’s so messed up,” Sora said, nodding firmly. “But I’m sure you’ll get home! If you know the path, then that can’t be impossible, right?” 

Alice nodded quickly right behind him, latching onto that idea. “Yes, of course. After all, there must be  _ some  _ order, isn’t that so?” 

Sora wasn’t really sure what that meant, but he nodded, anyway. “Yeah. Definitely.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to get home, Mr. Sora?” 

_ Mister _ ? Woah! 

“Haha…” Sora scratched the back of his head, a little uncomfortable being called that. He felt his face turning red, despite what they were talking about. “I mean, sure, I’ve gotta, right? This is just… like a kinda bad dream. It has to be. Right?” 

Alice’s face lit up as if she’d just had some kind of epiphany. 

“A dream! Oh, exactly.” She got to her feet, balled her little hands into fists and started chanting, “Wake up, Alice! Wake up!” 

Sora laughed. 

“Don’t laugh at me!” she said, stomping a foot and pouting, her eyes snapping back open to glare down at him. “It  _ surely  _ must be a dream, for nothing else could make such a mess! Wake up! Wake  _ up _ !” 

She pinched both her cheeks at the same time. 

Whatever happened, she didn’t wake up, but when she opened her eyes again, they went even wider. Sora felt a tremor in the earth. 

“Oh, please, wake up, Alice…” she said, even softer, her eyes staring out at something over Sora’s shoulder. 

Not sure he wanted to, Sora turned his head… 

Behind him, marching into place, were lines upon lines of cards: red and black and gold suits all in their queue, tottering back and forth in rhythmic marching. Then, in uniform tenor, they seemed to be singing: “ _ Make way! Make way! A trial is set today. The Queen of Hearts and all her guards will find what part you played.”  _

“Wake up, wake up” Alice whispered to herself, covering her mouth and squeezing her eyes shut. Sora got off his seat and scrambled to hide behind the cage, having a feeling he shouldn’t be caught loitering here, lest Alice’s warning prove right-- “Wake up!”

“S I L E N C E .”

A hush fell over the crowd. 

In moments, the clearing had  _ become  _ a crowd. There were woodland creatures sitting up in the empty podiums and elevated seats he’d seen before, each one dressed just like the duck from before, but fancier. Their shirts had frills on them, and they had cravats and ties and vests with both buttons pulled together in front. One little brown rabbit had little black gloves, and a few wore hats which they had clutched to their chests. 

All around them, the cards--playing cards, as tall as Sora and Alice combined-- had taken up in the spaces between things. They stood between all the constructs and two at least were posted at all the hedge doors to the maze. Their faces were all identical, even though their colors were not--and the only clear space was between the largest, wooden stand, and the big heart-patterned podium with the two largest chairs on them. 

And then, a woman appeared. She had a round, severe face, with black hair up in a messy bun and a dress that blew outwards from her waist so far it was impossible for anyone to come close without risking being run over by ruffles. She ascended the construct somehow, appearing alongside a very little, bearded man at the very top and regally taking her seat. 

Sora was trying so hard to find where the stairs she  _ must’ve  _ taken to get up there were, he didn’t notice the two card soldiers coming to pluck Alice’s cage off the ground and carry it to the wooden platform directly across from the Queen. His hiding place taken away, he scrambled behind the platform further, though no one seemed to have taken notice of him, too busy quieting their little murmurs as the Queen rapped three times on her podium.  _ Tap Tap Tap.  _

“Order! Order,” she said. “By the authority in me, I declare court is in sess-scion.”

“Hem, hem,” another voice said-- Sora peeked out from behind the platform to spot a little, white rabbit on the nearby hedge podium, his neck in a ruffle all its own and a large chain hanging out of his pocket. His voice was strained and ragged. “By order of her Majesty the Queen, you are charged with  _ attempted murDER OF Her HIghnESS! _ ”

A peacock in a frock screamed and fainted. Alice in her cage waved her hands through the bars. “No! I didn’t!”

“A crrrime of the  _ highest order _ , and yet you deny it still. I SENTENCE Y O UU TO  _ death _ .” 

“What!” Sora cried out, and Alice did too, but it was all drowned out by the hooting and waddle of the animals in the stands and the cards who had broken position to applaud. 

“But wait!” Alice said, and had to shout even louder a second time to be heard at all. “ _ Wait! _ I haven’t even had a chance to defend myself!” 

The Queen banged her mallet--it was a little heart shaped thing, and Sora was getting cross-eyed with all the hearts around him--and shouted for silence once again. 

“Do you have  _ evidence? _ ” she asked.

“Well, well no,” the little girl said, and with the Queen leaning so far over the edge of her podium, Alice looked smaller than ever. “But I still didn’t do it!”

She slammed her little fist on the cage. 

The Queen let out a belly of a laugh. 

“If you cannot provide  _ proof _ , then you cannot prove anything!” 

Sora stepped out. “But she  _ can  _ prove it!” 

(He felt the whole courtroom go still.)

(He  _ felt  _ every little beady animal eye turn to him, like cold sweats breaking out under his clothes. All the cards in their rows giving him gooseflesh, and the Queen’s heated glare making him sweat all at the same time. And Alice, who was smaller than he was, and had bright blue eyes like Kairi. Her hands were clenched in front of her, as if trying to hold on to something he couldn’t see. And he could hold on to that thing, too.)

...Sora shifted, trying to straighten up a little from where his sudden appearance had left him bent. He let out a quiet cough as he stood a little to the left of the Queen’s podium, uninvited, and wrongly dressed, and--

“Don’t just stand there fidgeting!” the Queen bellowed. “Explain yourself!” 

“Uh,” Sora said, not having realized it was still his turn to talk.

“NO FILLERS,” said the Queen. 

Sora’s jaw snapped shut and he tried to think of what to say. Tried to remember what Alice had said about how particular they were about things here. 

“Alice… isn’t the culprit,” Sora said, “And if you’ll allow me to gather evidence, I can prove it!”

The Queen narrowed his eyes at him, and she opened her mouth to shout again, when a little voice spoke up from behind her. 

“Dearest!” the little King said. “What’s the harm in letting him try? Why not have a little longer of a trial this time?” 

He smiled a dashing little smile. 

And the Queen melted, smiling sappily right back. 

“Of  _ course _ , dear. Excellent suggestion. YOU.” 

Sora didn’t need to look to know when she whipped back around towards facing him. 

“Go gather the evidence!” she said, “And be back  _ promptly.” _

She dismissed him with more a smack of the wrist than a flick of it, and a group of card soldiers leapt aside, opening the clearing towards the maze again so that he could run through it. 

But he hesitated, and ran up to the wooden podium Alice’s cage was on first, and just hoped they wouldn’t get mad at the pause. 

“Who  _ did  _ do it?” he whispered, leaning in as close to the bars as he could. 

Alice hiccuped and tried to hide it behind her hands, but she leaned forward to meet him. 

“ _ The shadow monsters _ ,” she said. “I saw them. But it’s much too dangerous!” 

And Sora nodded, feeling a little stronger, now. A little braver. 

“Okay,” Sora said. “Don’t worry.”

She shook her head and let out another sniffle. “Oh, no. It’s much too dangerous!”

“I’ll be okay, Alice,” he said, smiling despite how tired the day had left him. Maybe this was what Riku felt like whenever he comforted Sora and Kairi when they were little. “I know how to deal with them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alice is a little bit of a snob, but most kids are in their own ways

**Author's Note:**

> they move on tracks of neverending light


End file.
